A statement from Morris Dees We’ve Lost a Champion.
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of legendary civil rights activist Julian Bond, SPLC’s first president. He was 75 years old and died last evening, August 15, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
From his days as the co-founder and communications director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to his chairmanship of the NAACP in the 21st century, Julian was a visionary and tireless champion for civil and human rights. He served as the SPLC’s president from our founding in 1971 to 1979, and later as a member of its board of directors.
With Julian’s passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.
Julian is survived by his wife, Pamela Horowitz, a former SPLC staff attorney, and his five children.
Not only has the country lost a hero today, we’ve lost a great friend.
Julian Bond was a true class act.
Why his passing fills some of us older folks with sadness is that it’s a reminder of what was never to be. He was the man we envisioned would someday be the first African American President. The optimism of youth. Yet somehow all the right pieces for this right man never fell into place.
1972 — not yet old enough to be the VP nominee and he also hadn’t been in 1968.
Georgia was not then nor now ready for an African American Senator or Governor.
1976 and 1980 – Jimmy Carter. Not legal for both nominees to be from the same state. However, that wasn’t relevant as Bond and Carter were from two different wings of the Democratic Party.
1984 – Mondale went with a different kind of statement.
With the rise of the DLC, there was no place for someone as authentic and elegant as Julian Bond.
Our loss.
Since the death of Julian Bond brought a tear to my eye that younger people might not understand, Chicago Minx’s dKos diary, totally unrelated to Bond except for a time that once was, An Abortion 1979 When Republicans Were Saner also made me teary eyed.
That wasn’t as easy to do in 1979 as it had been a few years earlier. But that didn’t stop ordinary good people regardless of religion and/or political affiliation from helping.
Planned Parenthood was doing the heavy lifting, but the anti-abortionist had yet to become a powerful political force. They got a huge assist from the 1976 Hyde Amendment that denied poor women Medicaid funded abortions. And that was endorsed by the President the next year.
2006 Bond on death of Coretta Scott King
But he didn’t stop there:
Principles always trumped power and personal ambitions for this man. After all, what use is power if one has no principles.
(iirc — many other “leaders” in Democratic circles were still “evolving” on SS in 2006.)
I lived in Atlanta twice while he was in the legislature. A class act indeed.
Thanks for the reminders about his political career and what might have been. Had it not been for others in the Democratic line of “who’s next”, he might have been an outstanding Mayor of Atlanta. In Georgia, that could have been a position from which to run for President with the right record in his administration. A long-shot in any event because the time would have to be propitious for him to get homestate delegate support.
Recall that back in 2007 I had no doubt that the country was then able and willing to elect a woman or a black man President. Something in the consciousness of the majority of Americans had changed to make that possible, but couldn’t date when that change had occurred, although it did feel as if it had been recent.
Bond was limited by his historical time and geography. Both disfavored him. His talents should have taken him at least to the US House by the late 1970s. And yet his first attempt wasn’t until 1986 and he lost to Lewis. A “mid-life crisis” followed that defeat but was probably long in the making. Not rare for those that end up with too much professional and personal responsibility at a young age because it seem to short-circuit some necessary, young adult maturation stages and skipped steps do bite back at some point. Anyway, he recovered and went on to live an admirable professional and personal life.
Yet it’s difficult not to be wistful for what could have been for the most talented AA politician of his generation and the next.
This is why I don’t pay much attention to Shaun King’s pieces: No NY Times enslaved African American women could not be the mistresses of those who claimed to own them
In this instance, he grabbed one sentence from Julian Bond’s obituary from NY Times and dialed up his outrage meter (not that it ever seems to be dialed down) and ran with it:
Not bothering to check any other sources on the issues – including what Julian Bond himself may have said. Which he did:
Both Bond and the NY Times used the word “mistress” to characterize the relationship between Bond’s great grandmother and the white father of her children. But only the NY Times came in for King’s outrage.
King also doesn’t bother to do not so difficult research into matters that outrage him.
The NY Times’ probably erred in describing Bond’s grandfather’s father as a “KY farmer.” Preston Bond was a Methodist minister.
Julian Bond did correctly point out that his great grandmother Jane was the property of Preston Bond’s wife and not Bond’s. Which may not be any more relevant than the fact that Sally Hemings was the property of Jefferson’s wife.
While there’s no reason to doubt that Jane in any way consented to a sexual relationship with Preston Bond, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as Julian Bond’s statement would make it seem.
Jane was born in 1828 on the Thomas Arthur KY plantation. Her mother’s name was Martha and she was reportedly the KY wife of a Henry Crockett, a VA slave. On his death in 1833, Thomas Arthur freed three of his slaves and the children of one, Mary, on their 25th birthday. (Hmm.) The bulk of his estate passed to his son Ambrose Arthur. On his death in 1859, hid didn’t free any of his slaves which presumably still included Martha.
When Belinda Arthur married Preston Bond in 1849, Jane went with her. Belinda had five children between then and 1860 and another five between 1862 and 1870.
Jane’s first son, James Bond was born in 1863 and her second son, Henry Bond was born in 1866. At some point after that Jane and her sons moved to Knox County where Jane had been born and some of her family still lived.
What is remarkable about Jane is that somehow both of her sons had enough thirst for education that they went to college and their achievements didn’t stop there. James and Henry. (All of James’ six children, five sons and one daughter attended college, four graduated and also obtained graduate degrees. All of Henry and Anna Lee Gibson Bond’s nine children graduated from college, five earned MA’s, two became physicians.) The smartest Bond descendants appear to be those of Jane (Arthur). And they appear to gave been ably assisted by Julian Bond’s other grandmothers and great grandmothers (whose stories haven’t been well documented).
How many white people today can claim that their ancestors graduated from college in the 19th century and all of the descendants attended and most graduated from college?